Chronology

May 21, 1844 Henri Rousseau is born in Laval, France in the Loire Valley into the family of a tinsmith.

1863 He works for a lawyer and studies law. Goes to army after a small perjury.

1868 With his father's death, Rousseau moves to Paris to support his widowed mother as a government employee.

1871 He is appointed as a collector of the octroi tax on goods entering Paris.

From 1886  He exhibits regularly in the Salon des Indépendants.

1893 Rousseau retires and moves to a studio in Montparnasse where he lives and works until his death.

1898 He gets married Josephine Noury.

1908 Picasso holds a half serious, half burlesque banquet in his studio in Le Bateau-Lavoir in Rousseau's honour.

2 September 1910 Rousseau dies in the Hospital Necker in Paris.